In an era of renewable energy demand and distributed power generation sources, there is an urgent need for small (less than 150 tons per day) municipal waste combustors (MWCs) that can achieve superior environmental performance at a competitive capital cost and operating and maintenance cost.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,441 to Somodi discloses various improvements in previous inclined hearth municipal waste combustors (MWCs) to address problems with underfire combustion air systems that tended to become plugged up with molten materials from the municipal solid waste stream. However, drawbacks with the system disclosed by Somodi include: 1) excessive operating and maintenance cost; and 2) combustion inefficiency.
It is therefore desirable to provide improvements on the Somodi design for underfire air systems that also address numerous other “next generation” design improvements for starved air inclined hearth MWCs.